Kaliope's WoW Crafting Blog

Investigative Reporter for World of Warcraft Tradeskills

The first big news to my mind is... you can now fish anywhere while leveling up! I really like this change, because it eases the path for high level characters to take up fishing without forcing them to hang out in low level zones. On the test realm my rogue was fishing right in Dalaran, which is much more convenient to her since she doesn't have to waste a hearth CD to get back to Northrend. I mean, you end up with a lot of junk as advertised, but it's not like we wanted the stacks of Brilliant Smallfish either. At least the fishing junk is funny.

PLUS we're no longer required to do the Artisan quests for Cooking or Fishing -- I'm not sure how I feel about that. For both professions I thought it was nice to have that rite of passage. While I support the change of removing training books from the process, I think having quests for professions make them more interesting. I assume this change was made to streamline the leveling process for new players who just want to power up to the current cap. But I remember those quests with some fondness and nostalgia, it's just one of those things that you did, and it was a pain in the ass, but you had a sense of pride about achieving it. I guess the times, they are a-changin'... <sniff>

Next up - Wintergrasp has discovered fish. Or the fish discovered Wintergrasp. Or somebody put a boy fish and a girl fish in the pond and they went all tribble on us. I checked out the fishing in Wintergrasp and I think this might become a new hotspot. Which I assume Blizzard did on purpose because PVP + Fishing = Fun Fun Fun?!? Fisherfolk tend to be generous souls when it comes to faction friction. Sending them into a PVP zone is like locking the carebears in with the tasmanian devils and then bending the key in the lock. I'm sure the Blizz folks will have an obscene amount of fun watching this play out :P

On the plus side, the fishing is really good in Wintergrasp. Here's a sample of what I pulled out in my sample fishing session:

18 Nettlefish

2 Giant Darkwater Clams (4-5 Succulent Clam Meat each)

12 Glacial Salmon

18 Musselback Sculpin

As you can see, these are all great fish that are used in popular recipes. And there's no need for spawn camping, this is open water fish. For folks who need to supply their raids, this is probably going to be a time saver. Except for all the pesky PVP going on around you...

And finally, it's all about the Clams baby!

A new clam, the Giant Darkwater Clam, can be obtained by fishing in Wintergrasp. This mighty clam has a greatly increased chance to drop pearls, and yields up to five times the regular amount of clam meat.

Loot from clams now stacks correctly!

Changed the icon for Succulent Clam Meat so it doesn't look quite as disgusting.

This last part is my favorite: complete with new, less "disgusting" icon. I'm at a loss... is disgusting really a goal when doing icon design??

7 comments:

Well, seems you forgot about some of the biggest end game changes for fishing (if there is something called end-game-fishing thats it :D)

*New fishing dailies in Dalaran, which BTw gives you Kirin TOr reputation if you are into that thing still. This also mean new poles, and another change on getting some of the fishing dailies rewards you might be still looking for.

*New fishing small pet, this comes from the Northern pools from what I have heard so far.

*New fishing mount. You want to have a turtle mount that is about as good as some of your other mounts, and don't cost you an arm and a leg.....just start fishing for your own coral sea turtle.

You're right Alaz, I didn't post about all the new stuff for fishing in 3.1, I only posted about things that I directly tested or verified. There are some new goodies that drop in the bag from the fishing daily -> I'm guessing Wowhead or El's site will be the best place to learn more about those since I don't generally track drop rates in the same detail they do.

I'm actually leveling fishing on my Rogue just for the KT rep, so that's a happy change. Well, I guess if you can call leveling fishing a 2nd time happy...

Well fishing has come a long way since Vanilla WoW. If you go to El's site, he tells us in his guide (http://www.elsanglin.com/leveling_fast.html) that you could level to 450 in "just" 12 hours of game play.....if you are studying for an exam or maybe you just need to catch on your newspaper reading you could do that while leveling :D

So far I have done 2 fishing dailies in the live server: The Ghostfish, and the Monsterbelly Appetite.

The first one, I needed almost 10 minutes to fish it up at Scolar Basin, You don't need to move from pool to pool to get it, you can catch it from open water. 20 minutes to fisnish it up, from picking up the quest, the flight from Dalaran to SB, fishing and a hearth to turn it out (I so love I have 2 HS to burn :D)

The second was even faster, I would recomend going to the Borrean Tundra. South of the Walrus town, you should find some icebergs, with lots of pools for Monstrosities, so its a little flight, some pool fishing and then another HS :D

If you are going for the turtle, keep fishing on pools everytime ou can. Its a rare catch and you will eventually get it, unless you have my luck and you are still trying to cathc Mr. Pinch for the second time.

Out of curiousity, I tried doing the fishing daily on my fishing-virgin warrior. After 50 minutes spent fishing (not including travel time back to Dalaran, to train), my warrior has reached 142 fishing, and fished up the Ghostfish in Sholazar Basin. (Also fished up two nettlefish and a crystallized water - I think dailies have good potential for incidental leveling)

Thanks for the info Kiwi - I am also leveling fishing on my rogue (170 atm). I read on El's site that your fishing level now determines your miss rate, so presumably you could still do the dailies in Northrend if you were persistent. It sounds like that's pretty much what you did and eventually got the fishie!

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